Marketplace Tag

Valve really knows what people love, even if people themselves don’t know it yet. It’s why Steam Hats, in the literally and figurative sense, become such a massive market on the digital store front, enticing designers from around the world to try their hand at creation and trade. It’s only been open to a handful of games, but Valve is now busting that wide open.

A constant complaint that we receive here at Lazygamer is that the South African Xbox marketplace isn’t up to scratch compared to the worldwide stores and even the local PSN store. But a lot of people are stuck using it still.

When Xbox live finally launched in South Africa last November, we were elated; our years of campaigning and hard work had finally paid off. No longer would we be treated as second class netizens! Of course, being realists we stashed a little cynicism and skepticism aside just in case it wouldnâ€™t be the digital land of milk and honey we were promised. It soon became evident that our stowed pessimism wasnâ€™t for naught, when the local marketplace started out empty and was slow to populate. Blame has mostly been laid at the feet of our local Film and Publications Board, which certifies and rates the media entertainment that's put up for public consumption.
Itâ€™s been nearly six months since Xbox Live launched locally - so where are we now?

Today is the first day that Xbox Live is officially available from South Africa. The migration process has been pretty smooth for most â€“ except for the jarring realisation that beyond a handful of arcade titles and add-ons, the ZA store is pretty barren.
Yesterday, we had a brief chat with Head of Product Marketing for Xbox Live in the EMEA regions, Robin Burrowes who explained why.

Unfortunately the reality of being a gamer these days means that itâ€™s virtually impossible to afford every single brand new title that gets released and as such we have a huge second hand game market in South Africa. But unless you have been living under a rock for the past 1 000 years you would also know that trading games on forums is risky and retailers arenâ€™t the most generous institutions when it comes to trading in used games.
But have no fear as kalahari.net has come to the rescue and starting immediately you can now sell new or second hand games directly from their website. Whatâ€™s even better is that they have made this process as simple as possible.

Those of you out there who are petrol-heads and are still enjoying Forza Motorsport 3 can now head on over to the Xbox Live Marketplace and pick up the latest DLC car pack, titled The Road & Track Pack.

The new DLC pack is 104MB, costs 400 MS Points and includes 10 new sexy beasts for you to get loose with. If you only go with the sample pack, the new MINI Coupe Concept car is yours for free, and you get to see the other new cars around you when playing online, rather than that generic black thing.

Major Nelson has just informed us via his Twitter feed that Xbox Live is now having an inventory blowout sale (list in image above).

What his basically is, is a whole heap of marketplace content selling mostly at half price. The best part is that it is available to both Gold and Silver members, so if anything on the list interests you, now is the time to get buying.

The moment of reckoning has arrived, the Left 4 Dead 2 demo has landed on the Xbox Live Marketplace and we all now get the chance to see if itâ€™s really worthy of being a sequel or is it purely a cash in that should have been DLC?

The demo clocks in at over 2Gb so itâ€™s not for the feint hearted but seeing as this demo is multiplayer enabled and could really be viewed as a mini arcade title all by itself I would say itâ€™s worth the download.

We will be downloading it throughout the day and hopefully have some first impression feedback in the morning.

The new Xbox Live/Summer Dashboard update has spurned some serious debates even before it was released. But as you all should have already known by now, the marketplace includes an Avatar Market which allows you to buy some expanded gear for your digital self.
In other words if by some miracle despite the global economic state of the world, you have some extra ZA Rands to burn or singe then here's some cool stuff you can spend it on. So scroll down to check out some cool Star Wars, BioShock 2 and Gears of War 2 apparel you can pimp out your Avatar with.
I have to express my utter dismay at this attempt to squeeze some more cash out of us gamers who love to personalize our gear... but that isn't to say some of these items are pretty cool despite their price.

After a couple of false starts it seems we are all ready to get going with the latest Fallout 3 DLC, Broken Steel.
Major Nelson announced this morning that it was once again available for download from the Xbox Live Marketplace and this time they are quite sure that they have fixed the problems.
If you have downloaded it previously you will unfortunately need to download the entire things again and then after that if you are still missing those all important achievements just recover our gamertag and you should be good to go.
How things like this slip through Microsoft's certification process still amazes me as that is meant to be the every developers personal nightmare.
Source: Major Nelson

Major Nelson posts up the Xbox Live Activity charts on a weekly basis and every now and then they throw up a bit of a surprise and we post about it.
This week the normal charts have very little to get excited about, the top 4 shuffle around but stay the top 4 (COD WaW, Halo 3, COD4, Gears 2).
On the Arcade charts NHL 3v3 makes a great debut on top and Castle Crashers, Worms and UNO keep up their dominance of that chart.
And then the interesting stats, for the first time ever (I think) the new Community Games rankings have been listed.

You know those moments in life when you suddenly realise everyone else knows somwthing you don't? Like when you're told to go ask little Suzy out even though everyone (but you) knows that little Suzy is going out with Billy Bob and doesn't like you? No? Well... lets get back to gaming now shall we.
This just in, Â 2 weeks ago the NXE was launched and alongside that the online Marketplace has been added to Xbox.com. So now you can waste away the hours at the office by browsing through the marketplace and seeing what you would like to download, then selecting download and the next time your Xbox 360 is turned on the download will start.